Overclocking & CPU Heat Re: [plug] My Rave for the day - off topic slightly

[Warren Duff]

For those that are interested, Windows 9X does not include the halt states
as indicated below.  Windows NT (and I would assume 2000 but I can not
confirm).

However, a third party application called Rain (version 2 is the newest I
think) is available to do this. It sits in the system tray of Windows. It
drops the temp of my overclocked Celeron 300a at 504Mhz by about 8 degrees
(this is only the ambient temp, as my mother board does not have an on chip
terminal diode to accurately test this).  This brings it from being an
unstable machine (at 504Mhz) to being totally stable able to run for hours
upon hours under Windows 9X.  Now if only the O.S. could achieve such a
state!

Disclaimer: not trying to push Windows 9X onto this group, but rather point
out that it is possible to use an over-clocked chip with Windows, provided
you know what you are doing.

Warren Duff
4th Year Student
Computer Systems Engineering
School of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering
Curtin University of Technology

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Kemner [mailto:zombie at wasp.net.au]
Sent: Friday, 7 April 2000 1:42 PM
To: plug at plug.linux.org.au
Subject: Overclocking & CPU Heat Re: [plug] My Rave for the day

> Interesting, Win95 would not run on the O/C Machine, where as
> I never get so much as a SIG11 or BusFault out of Linux..

Even after running CPU intensive apps for a long time?

Linux calls the halt instruction on CPUs when they are not being used,
whereas windows just makes the CPU run an idle loop. Compare CPU
temperatures (on a system with CPU temp sensors) to see what I mean.
My CPUs run at ~35 degrees under Linux but ~45 or higher under windows.

My G/F complained because our home computer kept crashing under windows,
whereas I achieved uptimes of weeks under linux. Almost managed to convert
her to the light side as a result, because she was forced to run nothing
but linux. Alas, I failed when I found, and fixed the problem - the cpu
fan had stopped spinning.. However under Linux it wasn't generating enough
heat to cause a problem.

btw the system was a K5/166 at the time

 - Matt